Old Dog, New Whisker

“Leo has a new whisker,” I announced to the Fiance when he came home from work one evening. (Sadly, this passes for conversation-worthy news when you work at home with only a dog for distraction).

The whisker seemed to sprout over night—a rebellious white whisker with a jaunty curve to it, ala Salvador Dali’s mustache.

You may think me overly observant in regard to Leo, a smidgen too attentive, perhaps slightly obsessive. Yet my observations don’t stop here.

I can also tell you the color and consistency of the bowel movement he had this morning. I can tell you what his bowel movement was like last night, too. This isn’t a result of grotesque curiosity or a scatological fetish. No, no.

Poop is one of the first indications of illness. You’ve got to keep tabs on these things. Mothers of infants know this; this is why they peer into diapers and take stock of the contents. Too hard? Too soft? A strange color? Any warning signs and signals lurking within?

So when the Fiance walks Leo, the first question I ask when they return is, “Did he poop?” The point of a walk is twofold: 1) to provide an opportunity to excrete waste (particularly solid waste) and 2) to provide exercise and fresh air. If Leo had a nice walk but didn’t poop, then the walk is considered only partly successful (and I fret and wonder why there was no pooping). The Fiance jokes that one of these days, I’ll demand genetic testing to confirm that the poop in the bag in the garbage can outside is indeed Leo’s—and not just some random dog’s he picked up to appease me.

Beyond the daily monitoring of what goes in and what comes out, I take note of his nose (wet? dry? warm? cold?), his eyes (always running due to entropion, but excessively so?) and his gait (stiffer than usual? any signs of limping?)

But the whisker—I didn’t see it coming. It blindsided me. It’s a sign of time passing, of Leo aging. He’s at least nine years old, probably older, and despite all that I do to keep him healthy and slow the aging process, he’ll only continue to get older. (Though maybe some of the anti-aging strategies outlined in "Lifestyle of the Century: Will You Live to 100?" will work for Leo.)

I’m feeling older, too. And the signs of time passing have snuck up on me, too. It seems I can go for months and months and see no perceptible difference in myself. And then BLAM! I look in the mirror one day and am startled to see that I’ve aged five years.

This aging process is a sneaky one; the years and the wear and tear seem to accumulate in some invisible part of me, only to surface all at once, seemingly over night. I note the dark(er) circles under my eyes, the (even more) lines around my mouth. I try to conjure up the face that used to look back at me at age 30, at 21, at 14. Have I really been all those faces? Am I a sum of those women now?

I wonder if Leo looks back fondly on his puppy days, or if there’s a recognition in his body, somewhere, that things don’t work as good as they used to. Probably not. That sort of longing and nostalgia is reserved for us humans, isn’t it?

So I’m going to give props to my old dog and try to learn something from him. And I'm going to try and make it sound clever and make it serve as an ending for this too-long post. Here goes: Acknowledge the whisker (or the wrinkle or the dark circle) and keep on truckin’.